"We hope they still listen to what we're saying and not go out and try to drive through this area, because it is going to be congested if people do that," said Mike Miles, a district director of the California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans.Ĭitizens clearly embraced the warnings, leaving neighborhood streets clear near the closure. Officials were optimistic that the public far and wide had gotten the message, though there was some concern that the lack of gridlock would make the public complacent and that drivers would get behind the wheel before the freeway's scheduled reopening early Monday. Rick Cole is the former mayor of Pasadena and city manager of Azusa, Ventura and Santa Monica.LOS ANGELES Unusually light traffic flowed freely through the nation's second-largest city despite fears of epic traffic jams spawned by the 53-hour shutdown of a 10-mile stretch of one of the region's most critical freeways.Īuthorities closed the segment of Interstate 405 on the western side of the metropolis to allow partial demolition of a bridge, warning motorists to stay off the roads or plan alternate routes. Someone else, of course, will be stuck with the ultimate bill for maintaining all that new road and highway asphalt. Politicians and transportation officials know that spending public dollars generates lots of profits for engineering and construction firms, employs union labor and looks like progress. Someone does know what they doing, of course. The average commuter, stuck in traffic, puts up with endless construction projects, hoping someone knows what they are doing. Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t apply when it comes to transportation funding priorities. That’s not a surprise - university studies have long shown that such “improvements” induce more people to use the widened road, fueling sprawl and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. A USC study showed that four years after the project was finished in 2015, traffic along the 10-mile corridor was actually worse. That’s what led former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to wade into traffic one morning in a publicity stunt to get drivers to sign a petition for widening the 405 Freeway. But since that bill probably won’t come due during the term of current office holders, it’s better politics to put money into traffic “improvements” instead. If you can’t afford to do this, you’ll wind up having to reconstruct the street later on, at four or five times the cost of keeping it in good repair. If you regularly apply “slurry seal” (a thin coat of oil and fine sand) you can extend pavement life, but eventually you must grind down the surface and add a new asphalt overlay. Asphalt degrades - weather, utility cuts, time and wear and tear all take their toll. The longer you delay maintenance, the costlier it gets. And that bill will only grow.Īs a city manager, I learned the costly math of road repair. The general taxpayer foots the rest of the bill. Yet today, nationwide, only about half the cost for roads and highways is covered by user fees. With gas costing five bucks a gallon, people assume that gas tax money must be pouring into state coffers. Who doesn’t love a ribbon cutting?Īside from the fact that building back bigger will only exacerbate our reliance on fossil fuels, there is the dawning reality that there is no long-term source of funding to maintain what we have, let alone what will get added with this one-time check with 12 zeroes. After all, if an old bridge needs to be replaced, why not build a bigger bridge - and bigger highway connections on either side? More construction contracts, more jobs - more donations and support from corporations and unions. While much will go to repairs, state and local politicians will naturally direct as much as they can toward road and highway expansion. It earmarks more than $250 billion for roads, bridges, railroads, public transit, airports and ports. Nowhere is his message more pertinent than here in Southern California.Īt a time when many cities can’t keep up with potholes, Congress has just passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill, signed into law by President Joe Biden. Marohn has just written a book called “Confessions of a Recovering Engineer” that systematically demolishes the self-serving arguments of traffic engineers to justify the costs for widening and expanding America’s already vast road and highway network. “There is no conceivable plan at any level of government that can pay to maintain more than a fraction of our existing transportation infrastructure,” Chuck Marohn declared in a powerful address last week to city leaders in Costa Mesa.
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